One of the questions that comes up when we look at lower marriage rates as well as delayed age of marriage is which sex is driving the change. Compounding the problem is the relationship between the two, and the fact that the answers could be different. For example, it seems plausible that women are delaying marriage in their early twenties, and that men who wanted to marry when young are less inclined to marry an older woman later in life.

However, I was curious if there was a way to test this in the available data. I’ve shared the long term trend of median age of marriage in a previous post (source):

I took the same source data and plotted out the difference between the values for men and women by year. Here is what it looks like going back to 1890. Note that prior to 1947 the data has gaps, which is why the chart immediately above started at 1950:

Here is what it looks like just from 1990:

My initial thought is that if men were interested in delaying marriage and women weren’t, we would expect to see a significant increase in this delta over time, especially as the median age of marriage increases. Instead it looks like 2 years is a very steady gap.

I’m not entirely through thinking this over, but thought you my readers might want to consider the issue and offer your own thoughts.

163 Responses to Which sex is driving delayed marriage in the US?

11 years divorced, dating three different women in Southern Cal and watching the 40+ divorcees starting to freak out when the kids leave home, aka, monthly checks stop. What can they do? They have never developed themselves professionally, by choice, and are completely unmarriageable, as they bring absolutely nothing to the table.

Would you want to commit to a 43 year old goldigger whose main skill is spending money? No worries, the stream continues to flow freely, and some of us men with money in our pocket drink from it again and again. Ahh, Life.

I am not sure that the data represented here matches the anecdotal evidence you have presented. In that vein it is wise that we do not succumb to the “anecdotal defeats data” meme that close to 100% of the female posters fall into. With that said, the data presented does show the age of first marriage drifting up VERY clearly. Dalrock also has data showing the birthrate decreasing in general, as well as the married birthrate deceasing, more specifically. Once again System Dynamics rears its ugly head. Change any input in a complex system and disasters are far more likely than in a less complex.
I feel safe surmising that both the birth decline rate, and the marriage push off rate are both slowly choking the misandry’s machine of the wealth it needs to function. This is also contributing (along with fiat currency ballooning out of control, significant drops in petroleum EROI, geopolitical instability, and brutal taxing policy driving unemployment, to a huge change of inputs. Many will ascertain that all these factors and others not discussed here will lead to a large scale paradigm shift. Prepare……

The two are so interdependent that it may be impossible to separate them by looking at the results. If women start delaying marriage, that doesn’t change the fact that men tend to look for a woman a couple years younger. Even if men were inclined to skip the carousel-riders their own age and look for younger women, those will be just as anti-marriage as their older sisters. The only way you’d get a drastic change would be if men started looking for older women — if marriage-minded 25-year-old men started marrying 35-year-old women who have hit the wall — but not many men will want to do that.

A better indication might be a survey regarding proposals and rejections. Generally, men propose and women accept or reject. So someone could do a poll and ask men how many times they’ve proposed and been rejected, while asking women how many proposals they’ve rejected (or put off for years). If men are the cause of the delay, those numbers should be low or zero for most people. Women would report never getting a proposal. If women are the cause, many people should report failed proposals.

My impression from my own acquaintances is that most women have turned down at least one serious proposal. The attractive ones may have turned down a few. If that’s typical, then it’s pretty clear that women are delaying marriage, because it only takes one accepted proposal to put you on the other side of the stats.

When 50% of men never marry, then the graphs will look quite interesting.

How is a middle-aged woman supposed to attract a man? Her best opportunity was when she was young. Her slowing down and crow’s feet wouldn’t matter if she already had a pleasant relationship with the man for years. Instead, women get the idea of marriage only after their mouths are no longer moist and tight.

What else can a woman do to enhance her attractiveness? They think what they need is a career. That whole “Plan B must come first!” attitude. Certainly, the ability to entertain is useful. As is the ability to carry on a conversation about art, literature, science, etc. At best we see hordes of women racking up debt pursuing art history degrees, and then all competing for the same few museum positions. Helpful for a wife imo, but the exchange is harsh. A big chunk of youth gone. A big chunk of debt created. If you can’t learn your art history from a library, then maybe you just haven’t got what it takes. Marriage before any college diversion makes so much more sense.

Turn 41 next month and received the best compliment from a 24 year old woman the other day which for some reason most women want to do. And that’s try and guess my age and usually they tell me I look around 32 to 34. I just smile and say yep, you’re right. Most women I encounter do not guess my age right.

If I settle down, it’ll be with a woman much younger than I. Late 20’s to early 30’s at the most.

If men are the cause of the delay, those numbers should be low or zero for most people. Women would report never getting a proposal. If women are the cause, many people should report failed proposals.

I dated one woman who had turned down 9 proposals, and another who had turned down 14. My own mother, after Dad’s death, turned down 3 proposals from lonely widowers… and she was in her 70s at the time.

Women, not men, are commitophobes. The stereotype in this case, is precisely backwards. This probably is another case of apex fallacy — the few top Alpha men, with many, many options, tend to be commitment shy unless they are religious monogamists. The rest of the male population is much more willing to marry.

@Cail “My impression from my own acquaintances is that most women have turned down at least one serious proposal. ”

Not to diminish your experience, but I’ve heard many a woman proudly claim “he asked to marry me” or “he wanted me to marry him” and I turned him down. In a couple of cases I was able to hear the other side of that claim. They way it was relayed you’d think the guy bought a ring, brought her someplace special, down on one knee and proposed. In the two cases I know of the closest it was to an actual proposal was merely a bedtime type discussion of how the other felt about getting married in general. One guy said told the lass he simply wanted to get married eventually. She now counts this as a proposal.

I suspect many proposal claims are nothing more than embellished Ego strokes.

On another note, a few months ago I exchanged numbers with a cute, flirty 24yo chick. We haven’t met up since but she seems to love sending me pictures of her nice looking ass on request. In one text I replied jokingly; “Damn girl….will you marry me?”

I find it amusing, people who refuse to criticize as flaky women who break off engagements at the last minute. While I don’t say it’s the wrong thing for a woman to do in such a situation, one has to ask, how could they get themselves into that situation? I also find it strange, this idea that a woman who marries anyway has no way of keeping her commitment. That doubts are a sign that the woman is not only unable to decide whether or not she wishes to marry a man but that she also lacks the moral agency to keep her promise if she goes through with it. Perhaps it is better to break things off, but it’s sad that when people insist it’s better, it’s because the assumption is that a woman is neither able to truly mean or keep her promises, that she has no moral agency.

Deny agency to women at your own peril JoeS. It is not a far leap of logic to go from:

Women have no agency->Women can’t make decisions for themselves-> MAN UP

Women have a clear moral agency, their morality is “What is best for me” All things in a woman’s life revolve around the utility of others/objects/ideas. I believe in less than 3 years women will be playing a MAJOR role in the MRA, as it is in the best interests of themselves to ensure the man-tool has resources for her to procure.

JoeS, my impression is that most people think that marriage is just so brutally, painfully hard that if you don’t go into it 100% in lurve and doubt-free, it’s certain to fail. It’s like marriage is a marathon: it’s going to take every bit of strength and preparedness possible, plus a bit of luck, to make it to the finish line; so if you start out with the slightest handicap, you’re doomed.

My own impression is that what really matters is commitment. If two people are committed to making it work, it doesn’t matter whether they’ve worked through all their doubts and are head-over-heels for each other. In societies where marriage is considered inviolate, even people who haven’t met can get married and do okay.

This should be obvious. Note the biggest complaint among men in their 30′s is they can’t find women who will marry them. Oh, wait a minute.

That’s actually true in church circles. Legions of decent guys in their 30s who want to get married, try and try and just can’t make it happen. (That was my own lot, til age 38, and I knew plenty of others). Yet the Church girls complain that there are “no good men” to marry… .decoded, there aren’t enough rich Alphas to go around, and the rest of the men are invisible to ther.

It has been obvious for some time that women don’t avoid marriage so much as not want to marry until late 20′s. By that time, more men have changed their minds.

These “marriagable late 20’s chicks” are all but nonexistent in the church realm. The few that are there, are hopelessly unapproachable. I think most of them are out cavorting with nonreligious men. Past 30, they return to church in desperation — having struck out with all the nonChristian Alphas, they are now willing to “settle” for a Christian beta provider.

Men in the church realm — where sex is forbidden outside marriage — almost never “change their minds” about wanting to get married. Unless they change their minds about following God…

Would be interesting to see female first marriage age by income bracket, intuitively higher income bracket women would probably marry later. Also the comparative income change in the same period between men and women.

Women in general are more cued in to personal narratives than charts and statistics, so I’m leaving this comment for the ladies.

I exchanged some comments with a woman in the spinstersphere who is in her forties and unhappily single. I mentioned that sleeping around and being a careerist in one’s twenties might be unwise if one wishes to find a husband. Here is her response to me:

Ideally, if I had my druthers, I would still want to experiment with life in my twenties and then be in that lucky cohort of women who were able to find someone in their thirties. 32 would have been just about perfect. For me, being fully human is the chance to make mistakes and take chances in life in the same way men are allowed to do. Also, the few opportunities I (might have) had to marry in my twenties were not right for me, and I had a pretty big fear of divorce. I’m also a bit alternative, and I’ve never been particularly interested in older men, neither of which helped.

I’m sure, though, if the right man had come along when I was 24, getting out of grad school, and fearful of the real world and of supporting myself and of becoming a full-time worker drone, I would have jumped at the chance to get married.

One anecdote does not a trend make, but it certainly is illustrative, no?

One of my little books – on Stuart England; that is to say the seventeenth century – tells me that after the Civil War, the average age of marriage for women rose to twenty-six with a consequent effect on fertility, as well as steps taken (obviously successfully) in families of three or more to reduce family size. The cause of that seems to have been impecunity; but that is clearly not the present cause.

As (and if) the percentage of those marrying declines and should the average age of marriage for a woman tip over thirty, I cannot see that even a late rush to marry is going to do anything other than create a generation of (obviously strong and empowered) unmarried women. In countries such as Ireland the average age of a woman at marriage is already over thirty, yet dating agencies (as well as Gyms and Running Clubs and Boot-Camps) are doing thriving trade, as the women continue to dither and imagine themselves a lot younger than they really are. The men who are willing to marry are unlikely to be the men that those women see as Mr O’Right.

I must confess that when younger I was not averse to the concept of being married, but I don’t think I would (as a concept in theory) consider it now; I once even proposed (I was 32; she 27) but I now regard her failure to reply – though she came round and had sex – as one very narrow escape. I have such a bad taste in women and do not trust my own judgement.

These “marriagable late 20′s chicks” are all but nonexistent in the church realm. The few that are there, are hopelessly unapproachable. I think most of them are out cavorting with nonreligious men. Past 30, they return to church in desperation — having struck out with all the nonChristian Alphas, they are now willing to “settle” for a Christian beta provider.

This is a hilarious comment. This is what originally brought me to these blogs so many years ago when I was in University. I had always been successful with women, and yet they always turned out to be quite literally; mentally ill.

I thought my taste for tattooed up suicidegirls might have been the reason, yet dating the “good” Christian girls was WORSE, I broke off my engagement with a “Good” Catholic Anglo girl, I’ve never regretted it.

It was after that, that I began to see there wasn’t a problem with my tastes, there was a problem with the product.

Dalrock, I recall your previous post on this topic. It prompted me to look at these data and do a more thorough statistical analysis. Establishing the causal direction in marriage age is a tough thing to do in a completely bullet-proof manner. In general, to conclude that X causes Y, one must meet three conditions:

1. X and Y must covary (though the relationship need not be 100%)
2. X must precede Y in time
3. One must rule out other more valid explanation

The last rule is the gotcha. In other words, the relationship between X and Y must not be spurious. There must not be some third factor driving BOTH X and Y, or both male age at marriage and female age at marriage.

All that said, there are indeed statistical tools to test whether it’s at least more probable that X is causing Y than Y is causing X. One can establish the more probable direction of causality between the two. One must still be on guard for that elusive third factor driving both (and I’m interested in hearing any reader opinions), but these simple tools will serve your needs here. We can test whether it’s indeed more likely that it’s women (rather than men) who are driving the delay in marriage. …And that’s indeed what I find.

The test I apply is for “Granger causality.” Readers can look it up. Specifically, we build two regression equations. In the first one, we regress female age at marriage onto lagged values of male age at marriage and also lagged values of female age at first marriage. In the second equation, we do the reverse: we regress male age at marriage onto lagged values of both male and female age at marriage. We finally compare the fit of the two models–and specifically the coefficients for the lagged male vs. female age as they each predict the other gender’s future age at marriage. This tells us which gender’s age at marriage is more strongly leading or driving the other’s age at marriage.

The data overwhelmingly support the idea that it’s females (more than males) who are leading the marriage age rise.

I ran the test above using a couple different lags and models (and just using data from 1947 onward to avoid the time change). The coefficient and significance for the female-as-driver is 6 times higher than for the male-as-driver argument. The coefficient for female age at marriage driving male age is highly statistically significant (p<.00000000001). The coefficient for male age at marriage driving female age isn't even statistically significant. It's no contest!

There's still the potential for some third cause. But even then, it would appear that third cause may be exerting its effect on males primarily through females. Until I come across something else, it looks clear to me that females are leading the age rise. And i suspect that the rise in male age that we're seeing is at least partly in response: Females who are marrying later still seek to marry men who (all else equal) are roughly 2 years older (and, therefore, are more established or possessing more resources).

“If women start delaying marriage, that doesn’t change the fact that men tend to look for a woman a couple years younger. ”

wanted to say the same, only ‘the fact that women tend to look for a man a couple years older”
the women’s age of marriage going up as more of them get involved in colleges for professional degress. 1981 marked the year they became majority on college campuses.

@Sunshinemary – The hamster wheel has developed an enormous moment of inertia in that one. Particularly about the part about:

“For me, being fully human is the chance to make mistakes and take chances in life in the same way men are allowed to do.”

So this woman’s hamster tells her that men are allowed to “make mistakes” (ie, fuck up) with impunity, and to be “fully human”, she needs to be given a pass for squandering her best years at 32 by a man who’s too good for her.

“Men in the church realm — where sex is forbidden outside marriage — almost never “change their minds” about wanting to get married.”

Which is why the best strategy for used-up has-been alpha cock pin cushions looking for beta boys is in ‘church’, where the supply of suckers err sexually frustrated bachelors often means that some guy is willing to pay brand new Lexus prices for bombed out, high-mileage Yugos.

@van Rooinek == These “marriagable late 20′s chicks” are all but nonexistent in the church realm. The few that are there, are hopelessly unapproachable. I think most of them are out cavorting with nonreligious men. Past 30, they return to church in desperation — having struck out with all the nonChristian Alphas, they are now willing to “settle” for a Christian beta provider.

@Cane Caldo Usually towing a kid from another man.

No, the Christian carouselers get abortions, mostly, to preserve the image of virtue.

Pro-life activists who work on clinic intervention, have stated that the girls from “Christian” homes, especially the white suburban types, are THE HARDEST to talk out of abortion…. they WILL. NOT. HAVE. THAT. BABY. as it would fuck up their chances at landing a beta provider and having a home in the suburbs like the one she grew up in.

Other demographics seek abortions in larger numbers, but, they are easier to dissuade.

“Pro-life activists who work on clinic intervention, have stated that the girls from “Christian” homes, especially the white suburban types, are THE HARDEST to talk out of abortion…. they WILL. NOT. HAVE. THAT. BABY. as it would fuck up their chances at landing a beta provider and having a home in the suburbs like the one she grew up in.”

This is why one should marry a sheltered homeschooled teenager who’s never had a driver’s license or forgo the whole thing. The more exposed to the culture, the more likely she’s been irreparably corrupted. 20 is about the cutoff. Much older than 20 and in the vast majority of cases it’s too late. Maybe it’s not so bad as an abortion, but it’s bad enough. The mere thought of marrying a woman whose had an abortion is enough to make one forgo marriage.

Women are definitely making the decision not to marry until late 20’s. I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that fact. They also make the decision to be sexually active without marriage, sometimes called riding the carousel.

As they approach 30, most of them do want to marry. Many men were willing to marry as soon as they had sufficient income. They would marry in their 30’s, but by that time have figured out the women have been screwing around, and don’t want to marry them.

Yes, men in their 30’s would like to marry, but by that time increasingly the women are not qualified any more. So, it is the men who are refusing to marry in that age bracket.

Any man who has an income and takes baths in his 30’s can find a wife if he wants. Men in their 30’s don’t want carousel riders for wives. So, they reject what is available.

One of the most amazing statistics is the one I first encountered in the mid 80’s was the fact that women who do marry have had an averge of 11 lovers. To my surprise, that is still the correct number.

These are the women who find husbands. Imagine what the bad ones are like.

For me, being fully human is the chance to make mistakes and take chances in life in the same way men are allowed to do.

Ugh. First, from a moral perspective, men are not allowed to be “fullly human” (read: promiscuous) any more than women are. The old culture demanded monagomy of both sexes; the new culture permits promiscuity for both, but rather hypocritically, judges male promiscuity more harshly.

Secondly… pragmatically, promiscuity is easily within reach of all but the most catastrophically unattractive women, but only a few select alpha males. She wants to be promiscious in the same way that “Alpha men” are allowed (which btw is easy for any woman who isn’t absolutely hideous looking).

She apparently doesn’t realize, thanks to the apex fallacy, that most men get little or no female attention in their 20s. Does she want to be “fully human” in the rejected beta-male sense? I doubt it.

The graphs don’t prove the delay of marriage. It only points out that marriages (if you can get married) are still happening with the same conditions. It proves that marriages remain stable and they occur at “relatively” young ages (under 30). If marriages occur when the couple is over 30, I would presume the groom is at least 4 years older than the bride. In the last few years (09 to 11), the age differences remain steady at an average of 2 years. Is this a trend? Not sure yet. It could be attributed to the economy so we must eliminate this possible factor.

Yes, men in their 30′s would like to marry, but by that time increasingly the women are not qualified any more….. Men in their 30′s don’t want carousel riders for wives.

Or the divorced.

I once organized an event for the over-30 singles set at my old church. EVERY man who showed up, myself included, was never-married, had no kids yet, was gainfully employed, and kept himself in good physical shape. EVERY woman who showed up, was a divorced mother, except for one out-of-wedlock “ex-cohabitant” mother, and two hopeless fatties.

I knew some of the divorced mothers well enough to know that they didn’t want any more children. They had Mr. Alpha-badboy’s kids, and wanted Mr. Beta to take them on and forego his own chance at family. Basically “you get to have sex, finally”… and that’s all they had to offer.

No relationships got started that night. Shamefully, I did know a few other guys, not in that crowd, who couldn’t take rejection and celibacy any longer and did indeed take some divorced mothers up on that deal, thus terminating their family lineages. Traitors.

This is why one should marry a sheltered homeschooled teenager who’s never had a driver’s license or forgo the whole thing. The more exposed to the culture, the more likely she’s been irreparably corrupted. 20 is about the cutoff.

Interestingly, my prayer and hope is that all 3 of my boys find wives before age 20. This is YET ANOTHER reason for this.

Note the woman’s focus is always her needs, her wants. Even with hindsight, she still cannot fathom that men might have their own desires.

As Vr and many others will know personally, christian women are extremely hypergamous. I was late to college, and hoped to find a bride as a bonus. Nope. The only christian girl who graduated witha Mrs degree was shamed, bagged and abandoned by her ‘friends’.

Fast forward twenty years. Several of those career girls are still single. I know they didn’t lack male advances. But their wait for Mr Perfect will take them to menopause and beyond. Their response is denial. They did nothing wrong. Its not their fault, apparently.

Secondly… pragmatically, promiscuity is easily within reach of all but the most catastrophically unattractive women, but only a few select alpha males. She wants to be promiscious in the same way that “Alpha men” are allowed (which btw is easy for any woman who isn’t absolutely hideous looking).

Hell, even if you are hideous looking it’s not impossible… I’m sure some have heard of TLC’s new show Honey Boo Boo… apparently http://tinyurl.com/thishosebeast has four children by four different men, and her current baby daddy is begging her to marry him.

The mere thought of marrying a woman whose had an abortion is enough to make one forgo marriage.

Indeed. I once saw a film of an abortion… .I’ll never forget that medical tool reaming in and out, pulling out baby arms and legs, and with blood spilling out of her…. Any time a woman proclaims herself “pro-choice”, I involuntarily visualize her as the star of that film… and she is thereafter eternally off limits to me. Even if I were widowed, even if I ceased believing in God, I could never touch her, out of sheer disgust.

By contrast, watching my wife have 3 babies, didn’t bother me at all. We were back in business several weeks later. Yes, that’s messy, but… it’s not the same.

Anonymous age 70 says:
September 14, 2012 at 3:16 pm
“One of the most amazing statistics is the one I first encountered in the mid 80′s was the fact that women who do marry have [lied about having] had an averge of [only] 11 lovers.”

The number of sex partners that women admit to is not based on how many they actually have had but on what, in their mind, is deemed “non-slutty”. Usually this means something in the single digits, even if the questionnaire is anonymous they will not tell the truth. Case in point was my second wife, before I married her (and this was before I had taken the red pill) I asked her several times what her count was and the number she used was 7. Fast forward to a time when she is being admitted into the emergency room at a hospital and under some medication that apparently made her a little more honest than usual (not sure why they were asking for that particular information but it was a female doctor asking and I happened to be there with her at the time). Then the number was 25! Point is you can never trust these kind of polls as women will never ever unless under the influence of some kind of truth drug tell you the real number as it would then mark her as a slut for all to see. Best way that I can figure out is to get her best friend drunk and ask her what she knows, you might then get a better idea than you’ll ever get from your perspective wife.

“It has been obvious for some time that women don’t avoid marriage so much as not want to marry until late 20′s.”

What’s the difference, really?

“pragmatically, promiscuity is easily within reach of all but the most catastrophically unattractive women, but only a few select alpha males”

Exactly! Ex. Act. Ly! It never ceases to amaze me: women complain about the things men say about them, but to those same women 98% of men literally don’t exist. Which is worse, being joked about or being totally ignored?

It would be one thing if women like her made mistakes and learned from them. But they don’t. They get burned by a bad man and just keep going after the same kind of man, never ever learning, only giving up when such men stop giving them the time of day. And chasing bad men might be “taking chances” but the chances that it will work out are so microscopic that “chasing failure” would be a better choice of words.

I asked her several times what her count was …7. ..she is being admitted into the emergency room at a hospital and under some medication that apparently made her a little more honest than usual ..a female doctor asking …Then the number was 25

Did you discuss it with her later? If so, what did she say?

Hamster wheel, keep on turnin’
Telling lies about my “n”
Spinnin’ tales about my virtue
I miss my Alpha once again
And I know it’s a sin, yes

The comment from sunshinemary’s counter commenter about being fully human and fucking everybody like men do is the apex fallacy in action. The men she sees are the cock from the cock carousel she thinks that is men. Now she is a used up pin cushion.
I wonder if she had a father in the house if he didn’t incourage her to be educated and independant. I have two daughters. Marry early or keep up with the other pussy getting credentialed and true to themselves(fucking everybody). They are really youg now oldest 12 but I do need to be prepared to answer that and put it into play. If not my efforts today may have my daughters paying the price for 50 years of misandry.
The marriage strike is not the issue really it is the entitled to benefits strike that I’m interested in. As long as those women end up childless so what, no harm done to a man and child “get your fuck on honey and be human” I fully encourage women to continue this behavior and want men to all see know and understand this is your wife if you choose. That is why I have no problem with players and pick up artist. make as many old childless spinsters as possible and then have them think as sunshine’s commenter does.

“Ah, that’s attractive. “Life isn’t fair because men are allowed to screw up and I’m not, and I’ve held a grudge about it for my entire adult life so far.” Sounds like a keeper!”

Hehe, very true.

One of the most awful things about modern women, to me, is that they see (a few) men doing something bad, and recognize it as bad, but rather than trying to correct the badness they start doing it themselves to “be equal”. And so the culture takes another step or twelve backward.

Interesting effort. I was going to do some analysis but Intrepid took care of it handily.

I think that the metric of men’s age – women’s age is not as useful as one might think at first glance. As noted by others, all it shows is that women prefer men a bit older than they are and men prefer women a bit younger than they are. It appears to be a metric independent of the increasing age at first marriage, or the increasing number of never married.

However, Intrepid’s analysis appears to me to answer the question asked: it’s teh wimmenz.
This is no surprise, really. But confirmation of hypotheses by some repeatable means is always useful.

This information could be useful to refute the “man shortage” articles that I expect to see more an more in the next few years. It might be interesting to make available to high school students, as a scientific exercise, at least for the honors courses.

I never heard actual woman speak of a desire for marriage or children among my peers in my twenties. Even in their thirties I rarely heard such desires eluded to much less expressly talked about.
I would have to bring them up in order to even had them discussed.

I had a sane (former?) feminist law professor once admit “woman always do what their told” – a clever way of admitting how susceptible woman are to social expectations and peer pressure.

I think this is a big part of it… They don’t allow themselves these desires or admit to them socially because they are such heard thinkers and wont go against prevailing orthodoxies and expectations. Men are historically risk takers and challengers of the status quo.

Also.. I definitely wanted to get married young and start a family young. It was the model of success that I learned from my Father and it served him well. However my college years (the 90’s) and beyond didn’t allow for marriage talk or expectations.

Now that I am older I am not interested in marriage or even dating, and would never rush into a marriage. Also…absent stability and trust as well as the real possibility of children (I’m not going to marry unless its clear she’s fertile)…I’m not interested in relations with woman…sexual or relationship wise..

Its a sad state of affairs.. These woman are not just generally of low character, but intellectually vacuous and amoral. Many cant even comprehend the kind of character traits that would entice me into marriage. I now I would have made a terrific husband & father by any reasonable measure. I also know I would have succeeded in my career to a much higher level given a good wife like my Mother was and providing for children as the driver of long hours…

Woman are simply (in the main) clueless and easily led…they don’t wake up to reality until there biological clocks tick audibly… they have no charm, and seem unable to entice men outside simple sex.

What other data do you have? Median says “That in any sample, half of the values are below the median and half above it”.

Can you calculate standard deviation?

Got any ideas on where to get data. Like age of wife or husband? Incomes, education, age combinations?

But intuitively I agree with you. Women are waiting for societal reasons and practical reasons. One of your posts basically spelled it out for me. If a woman wants to marry, then she will marry. She can slap a beta guy around and say “Stand here, you’re my boyfriend now” (more or less, merely by accepting one of the multiple offers that she receives). Then she can say “Marry me or take a hike”. My niece is a pig. She has a perfectly nice husband who to me is 3 maybe 4 points higher than SMV than she is. Her friends are pigs and I am always amazed that these pigs have such normal looking boyfriends. And even these pigs are the ones that say “We’re getting married, you hear me?”

The better question is “why are they waiting, or what factors are most important?”.

Roosh has a post today talk about 3 types of game, Western game, Eastern game, World game.

He says Western is all about looks and muscles, having alpha game, and confidence. It occurs basically in the English Speaking Countries, Scandinavian and Germanic countries.

Eastern game is about money, the woman asks “How will this man improve my situation”. Looks are far less important. This occurs mostly in former Soviet Union Countries

World Game is something in between and he says it is more like “The Accomplished Beta”. South America, Asia.

Some places are combinations of different type. Brazil is 2/3 world, 1/3 eastern. Poland 90 world-10 eastern. I would say Colombia is 2/3 eastern, 1/3 world.

But America is 100% western. It is the epicenter of western and is more so as a function of the finances where you live. Many players say Washington DC is the worst place for women in America. I found Atlanta to be so for similar, yet different reasons. Washington has a lot of government and lobby jobs. Atlanta has a lot of corporate headquarters. Denver is horrible. It is one of the most lesbian friendly places in country and is a magnet. It has a highly feminist female population on one side of the political and a megachurch female population on the other. And a lot of technical companies pulling in lots of beta males. It was the worst place I ever lived in terms of women.

So what you might read into your data and the Roosh observation is from an Evolutionary Psychology standpoint, when provider issues are not dependent on having males, the short term mating schedules will predominate over provider based schedules until a biological reality coupled with financial reality dictates other actions. If the woman has the means and opportunity to forgo when then she will.

My opinion is that in the Post Modern Era, we will see an end to marriage as we know it, to be replaced with men “playing” their whole lives and women living without men, gainfully employed in the corporate and government sector, with insurance benefits, backed up by government entitlements paid for by taxes on everyone, and by financial subsidization from the father of the child. We are basically just about there right now, but there is a throwback to the modern era where the women go through the facade of marriage to gain the subsidization from the father.

The wrinkle in this picture is this possibility of male birth control. You pointed out Mentu’s experience of vasectomy and how he had to hoax the doctor to circumvent the requirement imposed by the doctor and not by law. He to show that he had been married and already had children. The website newmalecontraception.com lists methods of contraception and states that the RISUG method is in clinical trials and 13 years of testing and is hoped to be commercially available in 2015. The sites doesn’t say where it would be available in 2015. Since the trials are going on in India and not in America. When I read comments about it there is reluctance and resistance from both men and women over squeamishness. But people used say stuff on tech websites 3 years ago “Who would ever want a tablet when you could have notebook?”. I would reply back “ME!!”. So even if 10-20% of men go this way, especially if they are the some of the best men around, meaning progressive, educated, open to science and tech, and see themselves more as targets for predatory pregnancies, then the result could have some teeth.

There was interesting video about a scientist from Brazil that had been to China and observed the use of birth control made from cottonseeds. It had been effective but is no longer is use due causing some potassium deficiency after long term use. But at the time, it was widely used in China and attributed to the success of the birth reductions and the One Child Policy. He said he had a study and took his findings to a world ecological conference. He was making a speech and one of the big name feminists, really big one, (I think Betty Friedan), interrupted him and said “We didn’t fight all these years to leave birth control in the hands of men. They will lie and say they took it in order to get sex” and the whole feminist section started to shout him down “NO MALE PILL NO MALE PILLL”. So expect women to fight a male contraception to the end. They will shame, lie, use political threats and pressure, maybe get them outlawed.

In this new ABC show “The New Normal” the central female character, a hot woman, is getting some form of artificial or at least non-conventional pregnancy. The commercial has the woman’s mother saying “Let me know when you get pregnant so I can send a congratulations card to SATAN.”

Time magazine in 1999 wrote an article saying that women would be the thing to apply pressure to force the legalization of cloning. Without the need for a man, they could have a baby girl that looked just like them, a “mini-me” and that 70% of women polled wanted a girl.
My ex-wife began to bawl hysterically when she found out my second child was a boy. She had confided to me later or actually, hurled in insult that, “She cried because she knew she was divorcing me even before getting pregnant and the only reason she remained with me was for a second child. And what was she going to do with a 14 year old boy when she knew there would be no father?”. (And that boy is my revenge on her. My mother used to say to me “I hope when you grow up that you have a little boy just like you. Then you will understand what you put me through. Instead of my mom getting revenge on me. I got revenge on my ex-wife. He is even better than me. He is natural alpha, a complete self-centered, arrogant asshole, who is not afraid of her in the least and knows exactly how to fuck with her).

So my opinion is that we are seeing is the beginning of what is to come. My opinion also is that men should stop fighting it and let it happen, and enjoy the freedom that will be given to them to not have live as husbands in the idiocy of marriage. If all the women are single then being a single man is pretty good. Lot of choices out there. If you even want to play. One of the choices is that you don’t have to.

The reality is “Women’s liberation means Men’s liberation”. It just didn’t happen in the way either men or women thought it would happen. We thought we would be getting an able financial partner. Women thought they would be getting more options. They did. But men lost that “able partner” but men got options also. To fuck them and dump them is one of them.

None of you married fellows are probably getting to watch all of those if you wanted to. I can pick and choose. I can choose to work more or less. I choose less. I am not lonely because enough shit has happened between woman and me that I am kind of thankful when I don’t have one. I haven’t been in Home Depot for a year or a Costco or Sam’s Club. I think I own a couple of screwdrivers and a pliers.

So the future is coming. Whether you like it or not. The PostModern is already here. It just needs to evolve a little more.

@namae
Don’t read too much into it. Pretty much any single adult can get married at any time. What matters is the quality of the person they can get. From what I see, both men and women are complaining about the quality available, and marriage rates are drifting downward.

I was interested in the talk up above concerning women’s alleged marriage proposals. It reminded me that some years ago I had been dating a young woman but came to the conclusion that though she was pleasant company and could tell her Brahms from her Beethoven, that – at least with me – she was not sexually interested, so I cut my losses. Next thing: a buddy of mine is getting a phone call from her mother, begging him to do what he could to talk me into dating her again, and telling him that I was THE ONE and that her daughter had already rejected some twenty or so (!) proposals of marriage. I came to the conclusion that even if the daughter was alright, the mother certainly wasn’t.

I feel sure that poor young lady was under terrible parental pressure, and as some years later she went Lesbian, my gut reaction about her was correct.

I think by the way that we need Deti’s Hamsterlator to work on the quote provided for us from Sunshine Mary at 2.32pm

There is a mild painkiller that paramedics use that really loosens the tongue. My daughter had it once and she asked me some very sensitive questions under its influence. Nothing too bad. But it really lets the truth flow.

Would you agree that women driving later marriage is very plausible since women have increasingly taken up educational and career opportunities? It seems obvious that that is the factor that has changed.

“Now that I am older I am not interested in marriage or even dating, and would never rush into a marriage. Also…absent stability and trust as well as the real possibility of children (I’m not going to marry unless its clear she’s fertile)…I’m not interested in relations with woman…sexual or relationship wise..”

There’s one major reason marriage is delayed, it’s that there’s no serious pressure against sex before marriage. If significant percentage women weren’t having sex before marriage, or at least a promise of marriage, they would be marrying much younger, you can take that to the bank. The acceptance of college and career for women is just the acceptance of fornication and contraception by women. If fornication and contraception were not the norm, college would not be the norm. Modern college for women depends on fathers being willing to whore out their daughters (while pretending to themselves that’s not exactly what they’re doing).

The acceptance of college and career for women is just the acceptance of fornication and contraception by women. If fornication and contraception were not the norm, college would not be the norm.

I think that’s a good point. Notice that many of the QF (quiverfull) families do not allow their daughters to leave home before marriage; if the girls go to college, they take classes online or commute to the nearest campus during the day and return home at night. We plan to do this for our five daughters.

I think by the way that we need Deti’s Hamsterlator to work on the quote provided for us from Sunshine Mary

I wonder if Deti would consider creating an iApp and an Android version of the Hamsterlator. One that could like to the speech recognition, so that when you are a date, or watching an Oprah-like show, one can get a real time translation. A big market, I am sure.

“Ideally, if I had my druthers, I would still want to experiment with life in my twenties and then be in that lucky cohort of women who were able to find someone in their thirties. 32 would have been just about perfect. For me, being fully human is the chance to make mistakes and take chances in life in the same way men are allowed to do. Also, the few opportunities I (might have) had to marry in my twenties were not right for me, and I had a pretty big fear of divorce. I’m also a bit alternative, and I’ve never been particularly interested in older men, neither of which helped.

I’m sure, though, if the right man had come along when I was 24, getting out of grad school, and fearful of the real world and of supporting myself and of becoming a full-time worker drone, I would have jumped at the chance to get married.”

Never fear, Captain Hamsterlator is here!

It’s a mouse! It’s a guinea pig! It’s Captain Hamsterlator!

Faster than you can say “I’m unhaaaaaaappy! Where’s my cash and prizes?!”

More powerful than a divorce lawyer.

Smarter than Andrea Dworkin.

Stronger than a feminist law professor crying “all sex is raaaayyype!” “all marriage is slavery!”

OK. Let’s have at it.

Here’s your hamsterlation.

Ideally, we all know it’s all about me. I would still want to experiment with BD/SM, anal sex, threesomes, orgies, f**kbuddies, and ONS with minor league baseball players from Caribbean island nations in my twenties and then settle for a dumbf**k who I could fraud into giving me a ring when I want, how I want. Because, back then, they were life experiences. When I’m 30 and I meet my dumbf**k beta, those “experiences” will become “mistakes” and “chance-taking events” (unless they were with alphas, in which case they will remain deep in my heart and I’ll pine away for them forever). And it’s only fair because those experiences or mistakes or whatever I believe they are will be what made me into the great, well rounded person I am. Hey, men get to f**k whoever they want with no consequences, so I should be allowed to as well. Besides, the few men who wanted to marry me and not just bend me over a table were too nice, or not hot enough, or not exciting, or boring, or not rich enough. (Yeah, I’m a bitch. What of it, asshole?)

And I wasn’t afraid of divorce. No fucking way was I going to marry any of those boring dudes. Shit, I wasn’t thinking about marriage. Are you kidding me? The only thing I cared about was getting my next drunk on, who was going to score the weed or the coke, and what hot guy was going to f**k me silly.

But if the right man had come along, with just enough hotness, dominance, money and status, I’d have married him so he could save me from actually having to do something with my life.

@ ybm I believe in less than 3 years women will be playing a MAJOR role in the MRA, as it is in the best interests of themselves to ensure the man-tool has resources for her to procure.

Sarah Walsh was the Silver Surfer of the coming LadyMRA Galactus.

That is too optimistic and goes against the whole observation of Hypergamy. The feminist philosophy of equality between the sexes and the concomitant of hypergamy is not entirely composed of women. You also have the social/sexual hierarchy of men to contend which also directly and indirectly support the current situation.

Certainly a few women can grasp the situation, Dr. Helen for example (I’m undecided as yet regarding Susan Walsh), however women will still follow the herd and that herd is firmly eating on the bitter plains of feminism. The alpha leadership of Godly men not churchian men, if anything is to be done, would be the only movement which would actually accomplish the goal of: Early and stable marriages, higher birth rate, lower divorce rate. Those are merely secular metrics however this route inhales, exhales, and snorts Patriarchy.

My Brothers ex-wife new about my strong views on marriage and family and my strong Religious Faith. To piggy back on the sunshine mary quote (great quote, utterly believable, tragic and indicative) Before she walked out on him in a no-holds-bard “abush” divorce.. she related to me her feelings on the subject…

One word was central and telling…..”chapters”…..Thats what she saw her marriage as, a “chapter” in her life.

She came into the “marriage” with that as her understanding and she left with that as her excuse. She was pre-preped and prepared for divorce because men and marriage were all about chapters.

Also: at 43, she was probably thinking…might as well close that “chapter” now…(even though things were going well at the time) while I’m still attractive enough to find an older beta provider..

Hmm, chapters. I remember in the 70’s women were already talking about how they needed to plan for 3 marriages in their life. The first for romance, the second for children, and the third for their empty nesting. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births were both on the rise, but divorce much more quickly. There was already quite a bit of resignation that marriages just weren’t meant to last. But all things progress, and now we have lots of both divorce and OOW births.

@ FitzOne word was central and telling…..”chapters”…..Thats what she saw her marriage as, a “chapter” in her life.

She came into the “marriage” with that as her understanding and she left with that as her excuse. She was pre-preped and prepared for divorce because men and marriage were all about chapters.

That is an interesting explanation and displays a very linear thought process. Being unable to tell the difference between a chapter in a book of a series and changing to a completely different series. Though it may explain why Nancy Drew was going to Hogwarts and ultimately ended up at Mount Doom to meet the intimidating Mr. Grey.

I have run the quote from Sunshine Mary through my own Hamsterlator and this is what it produced:

“I would still have wanted to experiment with multiple sexual partners in my twenties and then like most women find a naive and trusting Beta to marry in their thirties. 32 would have been perfect for me, as that was when I began to lose my looks and put on weight. For me, being an entitlement princess is the chance to have sex with whoever and whenever I choose, the way every single man does. Because I was getting so much male attention in my twenties, I did not take any of the offers I received (or imagine I might have received) seriously – as it never occured to me that the source would dry up – and the idea that any man would ever want to divorce someone as fabulous as me or that I would ever grow tired of the man of my choice never entered my head. I am in fact a very ordinary person, but am no longer able to attract even older men and thus yearn for a toy-boy to remind me how fabulous I am, for I realise I am not sufficiently mature to hold down even an LTR and thus a constant supply of young men would continue to feed my sense of desirability. Now that I am stuck for the rest of my life in a corporate cubicle and have no one to pay for my extravagant desires, I can only wish that at the time I was leaving college, I (like Anastasia Steele in 50 Shades of Gray) had met a hunky billionaire as is only my natural right.”

How can these women write such obviously see-through nonsense without any seeming sense of embarrassment defeats me. Thanks to Sunshine Mary for that priceless piece of Hamsterbation.

You lost me there. Do you think the only way everyone in the world bathes themselves is with a shower?

My wife told me yesterday that when she lived in Mexico as a girl, she only took showers,as you imply for yourself.

When she moved to the US, people had bath tubs. At first, she thought submersing herself in water was really gross, that she was wallowing in her own filth. Now that we are back in Mexico, she misses the bath tub. Actually, we have a jacuzzi (not the brand, that is what they call a tub with a pump, here) but it takes so much water she seldom uses it. We only get maybe 50 gallons of water a day.

Anom…
I love GirlWritesWhat…and I agree that feminism & the sexual revolutions chickens are coming home to roost.

I really have a problem however with the idea that all we need do is weight for a fatal collapse. I can go into all the reasons why this is a poor strategy and that such a collapse wont necessarily lead to discrediting of the sexual revolution or feminism the way many would hope..

But just to begin…that collapse (“fem apocalypse”) will occur while feminists and cultural leftist still are in control and still control the narrative. Remember…the bottom fell out of the black family at the same time feminists were renouncing marriage and traditional sexual standards and no one has held them to account in any public or discrediting fashion.

So while I agree that feminism and the sexual revolution are driving social and economic breakdown & am upset with to many in the manosphere who’s only real agenda is to sit back and wait for it to happen.

Fitz: there is a group of people called “Collapse Enthusiasts” who can’t wait for the collapse as though a collapse will clean out the rot. It’s a typical American mentality, in a way–in the old days people would just up and go West to leave their problems behind, starting with coming to America in the first place.

A collapse will just unleash unknown and unexpected forces, results TBD.

Perhaps the reason the age of marriage is being pushed back is because you can’t start a career right out of high school like you used to. I know that me and my fiancee are waiting until after college in 20 months and 2 days before we get married, ill be 23 and she’ll be 22.

I think marriage age reflects how well the society is, i mean if you had to start pumpin out kids to help with the farm and animals then getting married at 15-16 would be normal as my grandparents did.

I am well aware of the dangers of feminism and the sexual revolution and the consequences it has on our society and civilisation, particularly as my country is located on the edge of Wzestern civilisation, as it continues its downward spiral into regressing into a developing state… yet I would like to do something, but have also morally accepted the ‘sit back and enjoy the decline’ mentality, basing it on Houellebecq’s astute observation that he believes in the “absolute irreversibility of all processes of decay once they have begun”.

For all guys under 30: remember what the rad-fems de nos jours believe about your rights over your children; or rather the complete absence of them.

Penny Red (Laurie Penny) a Marxist Rad Fem (one of the few still to openly acknowledge it) wrote a piece a few years back in response to a (very sensible) article that Kathleen Parker (another one-time rad fem) wrote in the London Times (sadly now behind a pay-wall). This 25 year old ex-burlesque dancer (funny, that) who received a certain amount of notoriety for her coverage of the OWS protests, describes how children BELONG to women and that men simply have no part to play unless women deem it necessary.

Granted, it’s at the extreme end, but it exemplifies the cold, calculating narcissistic bigotry and male hatred at the heart of Radical Feminism. Here is the naked hostility from a MSM journalist and columnist in all its pure, venting hatred. This is what’s being taught in High School (she’s an ex teacher as well); this is what is being accepted in the mainstream from an award winning “journalist”. If guys EVER wanted to delay marriage, this is what lies in store for them from a significant number of their female contemporaries:

Anglo society has shown it’s cards. Look at the treatment of your prince Harry, they savage him in the media as an idiot playboy who is irrespnsible, this. A descendant of William de Normandie FFS!

Compare this to Catherine “I’ve been fucked by every photographer this side of the Calais strait” Middleton (not Windsor?)” with her nude shots. Oh the kid gloves They treat her with! This pauper princess! Better treatment then one born in the purple i am certain! My uncle and I had a nice laugh over drinks As he works at Mondadori.

It is the micro reflection of the Anglo worldview. Even a porphyrogenitus such as Charles is but a humiliation and a scum compared to the princess born of manure!

I would appreciate your input, dalrock, as a Christian man. I find a lot of people equate pornography with full-blown adultery. It just doesn’t make sense. I can understand having feelings of “am I not good enough?” but the easy way of solving that problem is to have sex with him more. Am I wrong?

Tasmanian Kate refused to use the word “obey” in her wedding to the future head of the Church of England. She stupidly gets her tits out and now they are in the tabloids. Prince William’s wife (the future Queen of England) is now ogled by other men.

It is good to remember that she can never be queen, only queen consort. Hers is not the right, but only the title.

It really shows how far Anglo women have declined that even the future king of the commonwealth had to take a fucked out late 20s “model” who was probably the greatest “party supply” any drunk aT the nightclub could have asked for.

I have no doubt William will never have a son if Catharines biology has anything to do with it. The amount of testosterone that’s been pumped into her from her 20s already has fucked up her endocrine system! Hahaha!

greenlander, because he thinks with his balls like the whole stupid family. They are worse than the Kennedy men. Kate has a good bikini figure, and she has an attractive face. That seems to be it. It used to be High Treason to have fucked a future wife of a King of England. One of Henry VIII’s ideas, after he ended up with Catherine Howard, who had quite a few miles on the sundial.

I suppose, as an Irish-Australian, I can have a little gloat that even the future King of England has had to put up with worse female bullshit than me.

I am here to report the views of the man in the pub, which is, that no one has any sympathy for Middleton. As one of my friends said, ‘You will never see a picture of Mrs [friend] top-less because she does not parade herself naked outside’.

The Media are rushing to claim how outrageous it is as the Elite close ranks, and the Royals – who lets face it, have a track record for behaving nakedly in public – are outraged. I’ve seen the photos [on-line]; they are grainy and nothing you cannot see on any Euro Beach.

I look forward to further indiscretions and perhaps even a tape a la Paris Hilton. There goes my KnightHood.

Opus, I thought about it a bit, about whether she was unfairly treated. She was staying with some friends at a chateau in France I believe. She was a little unlucky. My wife, when I first met her, told me that she had been swimming naked in the pool of a house she was minding. The little minx probably knew that would intrigue me. Some boy next door had noticed her too. Luckily, he was not with the paparazzi. And of course, the future Mrs Collard was not to be the Queen Consort, or whatever you will call her.

It does still seem slutty and dumb of Tassie Kate to get her norks out like that. I have no desire to see them myself. I am sure they look pretty much like any other pair of tits, but the whole thing is very low-rent. Royal trailer-park-trash.

Women, and that seems to include your wife, love stripping off. To the back of where I live is a building (where oddly enough my Great Grandfather and his two daughters – heroic single Dad following the untimely death of his wife – used to live) which has a loo for the men and one for the women, – offices now – and the rather large window is merely frosted glass – and fairly see-through. Some years ago, late on a Friday afternoon, as I went out, I observed at the ladies window, a young woman who had completely stripped off, prior to changing clothes (presumably) for the evening – should I be prosecuted for noticing? There is no way that I would have acted like that, in front of a window, and always keep my curtains closed when I change – my bedroom being directly opposite the loo windows. John Major is suggesting the Paparazzi be prosecuted as a Peeping Tom. I suggest Middleton should be prosecuted for Indecent Exposure – as I surely would be if those opposite saw me parading around my bedroom naked. Whatever the outcome you can be quite sure ere long another Royal will be caught in flagrante.

I have led a sheltered life – and the exciting women that you and Deti right about never seem to come to my door, more’s the pity – but back to Middleton: Are we really to believe that she, when stripping off in privacy of the Chateau Graden did not get just a tiny frission of excitement from the idea that maybe out there, is a paparrazzi with lens primed? Perish the thought! I predict more of the same from her. After all, no Royal has ever been pursued by cameramen have they?

Re Tassie Kate. Yes, I think it is possible. She is a model. Most women are exhibitionists. They are always flashing boob or leg. She is likely bored with William. The Hanoverians are dull dogs. It makes me wonder about Lady Di and the photo that showed off her legs, oops.

I certainly suspect that my now wife was interested in me, and knew, at some level, that picturing her naked in a pool would fire my imagination.

there is a group of people called “Collapse Enthusiasts” who can’t wait for the collapse as though a collapse will clean out the rot.

I wouldn’t say we’re enthusiastic, I’d say we just don’t see any way out of the mess we’re in, except a collapse and a civilizational reset. The bureaucratic-totalitarian state is choking us slowly, and even when you get one onerous (and useless) regulation repealed, 10 new ones take its place. Only a civilizational collapse can get of it all in one bold stroke. Also, there are many who think that a collapse is simply inevitable at this point.

Sometimes I envy illegal aliens — here in California they are given, in effect, diplomatic immunity (eg, if you’re pulled over without a license, your car is impouned UNLESS you are an illegal, then they can’t take it from you!!!!) They live outside the system paying NO attention to its foolish rules, and are able to act freely for good or ill. And they seem a lot less stressed out than the rest of us, though this may be an illusion.

A collapse will just unleash unknown and unexpected forces, results TBD.

True. You never know who is going to survive — however much you prep, you just might get unlucky. Worse, you don’t know who is going to come out on top, after such an event. One hopes for an explosion of freedom but the opposite may well be the result.

The “Collapse” will be a market correction. I believe in the collapse because a market correction cant come unless the market is sick and not operating in balance. If there is a collapse its cause we were wrong(the way our country has been ran for the last 60 yrs.). if there is a collapse it because its is necessary, just, and the outcome of an imbalanced market.

vR – We’ve been discussing this lately on my blog, too. I agree with you; a serious down-scaling of the economy will provide a much-needed correction to gender relations. I would prefer not to see a total collapse, however,

Oh, and a pox on your song! I was mindlessly humming “Sweet Home Alabama” all day yesterday! :)

But just to begin…that collapse (“fem apocalypse”) will occur while feminists and cultural leftist still are in control and still control the narrative. Remember…the bottom fell out of the black family at the same time feminists were renouncing marriage and traditional sexual standards and no one has held them to account in any public or discrediting fashion.
————————————————————————

“I know that me and my fiancee are waiting until after college in 20 months and 2 days before we get married, ill be 23 and she’ll be 22.”

Why? This is one of those things everyone says as if it makes perfect sense, but I’ve never heard an explanation, except for the notion that a wedding has to be a complicated, expensive affair that you couldn’t possibly pull off while going to school. But assuming you’re going to keep the ceremony modest, what’s the point of waiting until after school? It can’t be financial considerations, because eliminating one set of expenses in rent and utilities would save you money. Even if she’s still living at home, having her move in with you cuts down on your housework and gives you more time to get your schoolwork done.

Marriage is supposed to allow two people to help each other and make their lives easier. If you have to put it off until you have more money and more free time, I submit that you’re doing it wrong.

“I think marriage age reflects how well the society is, i mean if you had to start pumpin out kids to help with the farm and animals then getting married at 15-16 would be normal as my grandparents did.”

If you think about it for a minute, you’ll realize how silly that is. I grew up on a farm, and while I certainly started helping with things at a very young age and was driving tractors by age 10, I doubt that my productivity equaled my cost in room and board until I was at least 15, if ever. (Farm boys can pack away the food.) The cost of raising a child is estimated at over $100,000, even for the lowest income range. That kid’s gonna have to tote a lot of bales to pay that back.

My grandparents got married when my grandmother was 16, and they were farmers, but they didn’t get married and start having kids because they needed farmhands. They did it because they were ready — they were mature enough to move out on their own and start a family, so they did. They were together until he died in his 80s, so it seems to have worked.

If anything, the need for extra hands on a farm should mean that grown children in the 16-25 range would stay on the farm longer to help out, now that they’re finally big enough to contribute more than they eat. It doesn’t work that way, though, because biology says go have babies, when society doesn’t convince us otherwise.

“I wouldn’t say we’re enthusiastic, I’d say we just don’t see any way out of the mess we’re in, except a collapse and a civilizational reset. The bureaucratic-totalitarian state is choking us slowly, ”

Enthusiastic or not, partial or total collapse or not, market correction or Armageddon or not…”we” as a group are not ready to exploit this collapse …just as we have not exploited any of the already present “collapses” that have and are occurring.

As stated…The black family collapsed as a direct result of feminism and government policy by left thoughtlessness, Or same-sex “marriage” exposing the totality of the left as incapable of defending elemental family formation at the very definitional level amongst wholesale collapse of the family at large…
We need to take a page from the book of feminist gender Marxist and Frankfurt school Marxists who were prepared and waiting patiently for an “event” to precipitate their revolution. That moment came with the civil unrest of the 1960’s (driven by them and framed as a narrative by them) and the advent of the pill, quickly and immediately reinforced with the abortion licence to drive female sexual “liberation” economic “empowerment and direct attacks on the family.
In short we need a game plan for the eventuality of “collapse” like moments.. The housing correction was a direct result of over priced housing built on the backs of female labor participation. Yet one can see that the popular culture has yet to connect the dots. Likewise wage stagnation since the 1960’s.
The left is/was organized…on the same page rhetorically (very important) and had started their “long march” through the institutions. They were ready to exploit “collapses” we are not.
I don’t believe the collapse will come in a single definable moment..nor will those in control of the narrative allow the multiple collapses to be “framed” as the result of feminism or the sexual revolution.
Again..we are in the midst of the “collapse” be it family fragmentation, the housing bubble, epidemic levels of venereal disease, fatherless ness and the entire parade of horrible’s. We have yet to reach the critical mass or even the group consciousness necessary to exploit those elements of the collapse to the benefit of mankind through our understanding of the truth of the human person.

Back to the OP… as an epistimological matter, I don’t see where the information in age-at-marriage data is that allows one to say which sex is responsible for the observed slope. It takes two to tango, and with just the info represented by what’s in the graphs there’s no way to disentagle who’s causing or not causing what. All you know is that a marriage has occured, and the ages of the two people involved.

I’ve heard relationships have been likened to a game of catch. If the ball falls to the ground, it could either have been badly thrown, poorly caught, or some combo of the two. If all you know is that the ball hit the ground, you can’t say anything more based on just that information alone about who’s to blame.

There’s also no information regarding those who aren’t marrying. So any hypotheticals which might be drawn about the MMP are dubious IME.

Mark Minter says:
September 14, 2012 at 10:25 pm” I got revenge on my ex-wife. He is even better than me. He is natural alpha, a complete self-centered, arrogant asshole, who is not afraid of her in the least and knows exactly how to fuck with her)

Great post Mark, but I sure hope that reads somewhat differently in American than it does in Britspeak.

JoeS says:
September 15, 2012 at 8:35 am“There’s one major reason marriage is delayed, it’s that there’s no serious pressure … If fornication and contraception were not the norm, college would not be the norm.
Talking of pills, but not red ones, I notice in Dalrock’s first graph the red line starts to unstick at 1963, if not slightly earlier, while the blue line barrels on at the same level till 1974, and the first serious taste of mass unemployment for a generation. So the gap narrows perceptibly up to then.
What’s so special about 1963? The Beatles’ first LP?” …in 1960, (the Pill) became FDA approved and by 1963, 1.2 million women were using it.”
Looks like Joe called it. Shotgun weddings gone the way of the dodo, I guess.

Martin, not exactly. It is specious to discern who is responsible from those data, however, all sorts of hypothesis are possible, namely one about why the age for men is changing, one about why the age of women (at marriage) is changing, one about if and why the spread between them is or isnt changing…..etc etc. All of those could then be layered, and attempted to hold all but one constant and check others…by pairs, whatever, you see my point i think

“Wasn’t it Brendan who once said that men with daughers were the real power behind feminism? Whoever it was who said it, they were right.”

I totally believe it. When daughter is young, daddy gives in constantly since he wants peace and quiet in his own home and daughter keeps throwing tantrums and screams until she gets what she wants. Daddy doesn’t want to (nor wants Mummy to) smack said daughter and yell at her to shut up. When daughter becomes older, Daddy gives in when she makes cute little girl faces at him and says Please, Daddy, please. Thanks Daddy, mummy is so so mean by not giving in to me !

That’s one option, Elaine. There are others, such as a little snowflake princess running to Mommy and telling her “Daddy is so mean!”, whereupon Mommy informs him that he doesn’t know anything about raising children, as that is women’s sole domain, and that henceforth he can do as he’s told by the head of the house, or he can get out.

Given the fact that 60% to 65% of divorces are filed by women, which scenario – yours or mine – would seem to have more factual basis in support of it?

PS: In the US, a slight majority of children (50+%) will not grow up from birth to age 18 in an intact, two parent home. It is statistically abnormal for Daddy to be around the whole time Princess is growing up. But Mommy is always there for her…one way or another.

Brendan was referring primarily to upper middle class (UMC) families, where 2 children is often the maximum the woman will condescend to bear. So if a man has two daughters, it is unfortunately likely he will urge them to excel as much as possible, for a variety of reasons not the least of which being “everyone else is doing it”.

Thus may UMC families wind up with self-interested, self-assured, confident, coddled, ain’t-taking-no-nothing-from-no-man daughters who ride the carousel for all it is worth, and then what? Ms. BallBuster, MBA, may get a beta to fertilize her a time or two, but she isn’t really going to be married so much as in a business deal.

Many a man, in the middle to upper middle class, winds up raising a daughter that he would not want his son (actual or hypothetical) to marry. So there’s a challenge, for those men who are still allowed to be around their daughters: help them to become the kind of women that you would want your son to bring home. Not the kind of ball breaking harpy or STD infested carousel rider that would make you take your son aside and say “Son, I don’t know how to say this, but….”.

Assuming, of course, that the woman of the house is willing to allow it. That can be a big assumption.

Martian BachelorBack to the OP… as an epistimological matter, I don’t see where the information in age-at-marriage data is that allows one to say which sex is responsible for the observed slope. It takes two to tango, and with just the info represented by what’s in the graphs there’s no way to disentagle who’s causing or not causing what. All you know is that a marriage has occured, and the ages of the two people involved.

EmpathalogicalismMartin, not exactly. It is specious to discern who is responsible from those data, however, all sorts of hypothesis are possible, namely one about why the age for men is changing, one about why the age of women (at marriage) is changing, one about if and why the spread between them is or isnt changing…..etc etc. All of those could then be layered, and attempted to hold all but one constant and check others…by pairs, whatever, you see my point i think

AR, good points. Steve Sailer has written on this. And I have under my real name. Smaller families mean more with no sons. So Dad treats princess like a future prince. I have not done this, but I have seen men go feminist and push their daughters hard. One man I knew on the ‘net had got hers to be a helicopter pilot in the USN and thought that was great. Moron.

Fitz your thinking linearly. the collapse wont be linear it will be exponential. No one thought the Berlin would fall till it did. There is no possible way for a collapse to not come. So my question to you is do you not think the collapse will happen, or do you HOPE it wont?

AR, thanks….I had not yet gone and looked into the Granger causality calculation, though I had read his post and it “read well”, in that I didnt see any glaring errors in what he said or how he said it (or why he said certain things)

I am quite handy with statistics simply because Im a chemical engineer and my formal training naturally included tons of high math and statistics. As an aside, its because of that training and understanding that this is one of the few blogs I rarely get driven bat shit crazy reading. After graduating I never functioned as an engineer, rather on to the bidness world, and this has a point as well regarding stats. I ended up becoming a speculator, a paid financial mercenary trading petrochemicals that have their own set of derivatives and use energy derivatives as tools for hedging and sometimes even naked energy trading in and of itself. I was a quasi “quant” there as the companies I worked for were doing exactly what Enron was doing (hold yer fire!). I ended up working for an Israeli company the owner was a Mark Rick Jr. All that to say I was madly into stats via stochastic trading and the like. Thats my little pedigree on stats, and I absolutely hasten to add that I am well more than likely nowhere near being the statistical guru for this group, not by a long shot. I used the tools, and was formally trained yet again specifically for trading. But even that all ended back in 2003 when lots of my ilk went bankrupt, dragged by Enron.

Anyway, so I read the Granger thing and see that he made his number 3 the focus of possible issue, I would have made number 2 the focus before I made number 3.

Bottom line is that I dont see anything he did wrong at all. I even think its reasonable to roughly conclude as he did. Yet my comment still stands as at the very least cautionary. And reading the links you supplied about Granger causality , even those basic descriptions, throw other possibilities out as well.

Common sense and anecdote would say that women drive pretty much any trend in marriage, be it age, whether they divorce, when they divorce, etc.

My comment still stands, you can decide to what degree in this instance, but statistically speaking it does. IOW , Im not offering a counter opinion nor should I based on what Ive already said

I think the collapse will happen… but when it does I dont expect it to accrue to our advatage and our advesaries disadvantage.. I agree with the Exponential idea of critical mass and critical failure in complex systems.

However: I fully expect feminists and the cultural left to avoid acountabiliity as they have in the past and deflect all criticism. Indeed they will use it as an oportunity to advance feminism and socialism.

“Common sense and anecdote would say that women drive pretty much any trend in marriage, be it age, whether they divorce, when they divorce, etc.”

I have to agree.. One can argue social science ad-naseum. The only way to spot a causal connection from a statistical correlation is the number of social scientists who nod their heads at it.

I argue against same-sex “marriage” as part of my job. One is constantly met with arguments that deny that the sexual revolution or feminism had anything to do with family breakdown (it was the economy, or racism…or the moon tides…whatever)

There are those who will bog down all arguments as part of a strategey to prevent the obvious cuasul connection from being established.

Ok Fitz i think i found our communication problem. I said collapse and meant collapse. I think you interpreted it as a greater depression(bigger than THE Great Depression) . When i and most others say collapse we me a time where people will kill one another with impunity for food water and shelter. A time of anarchy cause government has collapsed. Our government didn’t collapse during the great depression(because of patriarchy but that’s a whole other topic). When, not if, this happens there will be no more feminists, no more liberals, no more anything to stop a man from doing whatever he wants. The man that wants to take on a woman will and raise a family. The man that wont, wont. Can you guess what will happen to woman that wont submit to a patriarchal man? The future belongs to those who show up.

Well, I dont subscribe to that big of a “collapse theory” myself… It may and even could happen to that degree but I’m not counting on it. I could go onto say why I dont subscribe to it…but its not really germaine to any topic on this blog. (outside the fact that come armegedon, no one will care about much except guns, amunition, fuel, food, water…ect)

Ok Fitz answer this question in your head. What happens when the Government(not federal) cant pay the cops any longer? In the first Great Depression Patriarchy kept things in line. Now we have no patriarchy and a 48% bastardy rate. A little goes a long way. All it takes in a pinhole in a damn.

The DHS and FEMA will offer direct payments to local law enforcment to keep the peace. The Marxist and the Anarchist have always been able to make common cause because the Marxist knows that social breakdown represents a opportunity to increase govement control, totalitarianism, and socialism.

The one thing that wont happen is anybody in a position of influence standing up and saying “this is the result of the sexual revolution and feminism” no matter how obvious that is…

I wish I could say that there is a grand conspiracy among the elites and that they have a teleological plan to maintain their power in the face of peak oil, peak food, and climate change, but it is my sad duty to report to you, there is no plan. The elites of the world have retreated into their mouldy estates, aging mansions and dying gardens hoping that they can ride the wave out.

They sit in the savoy discussing monetary policy, ignoring that deflation or hyperinflation is the only monetary way out. They preach globalization and neoliberalism while knowing nothing of what deregulation and austerity does to the demand side of the curve.

They know as little about what has brought the world to this point as the lowest educated big brother addict. I wish we were capable of saying that there is a plan to everything, that all is preordained by the top classes of people since time immemorable, but I’d be lying.

“I argue against same-sex “marriage” as part of my job. One is constantly met with arguments that deny that the sexual revolution or feminism had anything to do with family breakdown (it was the economy, or racism…or the moon tides…whatever)”

Fitz, it’s very very scary just how attached people are to feminism, no matter how they deny that they really are or make excuses for it, their world view, the world views of women, just absolutely depend on the feminist status quo remaining intact. Women have a streak of ruthlessly selfish irrationality that the crafters of feminism have masterfully exploited, so that even among those who you would presume to really be against feminism (young mothers with many children, opposed to birth control, giving lip service to obedience to their husbands) what you find when you scratch the surface is the overwhelming influence of the sisterhood in forming their basic attitudes and ways of thinking. They often don’t really know how to be like traditional women were, they have no reference for it. And even if they do, they seem to be swept up by this tide irresistibly.

Feminism is most pernicious in that it warps the conscience of women and makes it defective. Some would say this has always been the case. Not like it is now. Anyone who has experience of truly traditionally minded women can see the difference. There is something about the current culture that can utterly subvert traditional training while leaving the appearance intact. It is in matters of conscience where the panderers to feminine immorality have truly caused the most damage. In the English speaking world, it is the most pernicious. Having a mother raised in a society that was far far different from this one, a small German Catholic American town in the 1950s, the difference in mentalities is just overwhelming. What I have seen of other mothers when I was growing up and as a tutor makes me realize that most women totally ruined as potential mothers. Just talking to Iranian women has given me insight – they are actually more similar to my mother in their way of thinking – even if they have ideas about career that are feminist – they actually have a conscience and they are deeply disturbed by sexual immorality. What has often been remarked here, particularly by Caldo, is how women in this society make excuses for each others sexual immorality. When one notices among ostensibly religious women that there is absolutely no horror or disgust at sexual immorality among their friends and acquaintances, then one realizes that they do not truly have a moral sense or conscience like that which existed in the past. Yes, women can have consciences, they are frail and strongly subject to concupiscence, but they can feel tremendous guilt. In the modern western woman, even among supposedly very religious women, there is no longer any true horror or disgust or shame at something like adultery. They are, at a fundamental level, feminist.

Joe S. – yes I Concur.. Its deeply ingrained. My sister is an exception but only because she is religious and married as a virgin. She is that “disgusted” attitude” twoard her promiscious freinds that you talk about. It really manifest and alot more unforgiving than anything you hear from men..and it makes me proud.
Once a woman has had several partners I think they ruin themselves. They start to view men as not lifelong lovers and husbands and guides of wisdom…but as means to an end. If they see greener horizons in other men or divorce they will take it.

JoeS
what you have discribed about the nature of women is what was always there. The behavior you are seeing is normal female behavior. feminism didn’t make the behavior feminism made it into law and cultural norm. The “ruthless selfish streak” is normal and the “traditional’ woman was not behaving virtuously she was simply behaving in her best interest in the invironment she was in. Honor and virtue,duty and responsibility are not normal characteristics for females nor sexual alpha males and thugs. They are normal for beta males making it veryy easy to blue pil those men into projecting those chacteristics onto women in the name of equality.

greyghost, there has been a transformation in the psychology of women. The people who say everything is the same as it’s always been are in some ways feminism deniers. Yes, the nature of women is not so good. But what is merely “not so good” becomes a monstrous, given enough corrupting influence. There is no doubt that the influences encouraging bad behavior in women are at their peak.

Opus says:
September 16, 2012 at 3:55 pm“Perhaps you are not familiar with the immortal lines of Phillip Larkin …”

Yes, I was just being cheeky :P
Had the entire oeuvre (up to that point) of the Sage of Hull rammed down our throats for O-level.
That was a risque one, so it stuck.
And we had to do tons of Lawrence too, including That Book (strictly not curriculum, unbanned 1959, so fits the graph lol).

We had a fantastic old chill dude for a teacher, English and posh with it, former fighter pilot, double-barreled name, always wore well-cut lightweight brownish tweeds under the black gown, and mid-tan/chestnut brogues and oxfords, definitely an “off to the country” aspect to it all.
Lungs and so on wrecked by glycol and Senior Service (sparked up in class every twenty minutes or so! Did not give a ….) so he was off sick a lot.
Daily, some kid from his first class would be detailed to let down a few window sashes, winter and summer, so it’s not like he was irresponsible! (In those days it was considered prudent, and quite the done thing, for chaps to break long drives every couple of hours and refresh with a pint (or two), along with their smokes …)

God alone knows what he’d done, to end up in our provincial sink school. But he was the gentlest guy, never belittled anyone, even for rank stupidity, astonishingly patient. Never raised his voice, wouldn’t have had to, even if he could have. Even the neds respected him, whereas they gave the Head hell, as he was a whisky-sodden Labour placeman who used to stumble into Mr B-B’s classes completely @rseholed, and try and take over.
So “Sir!” would have to gently shepherd him out, with a wry half-smile, and a firm grip on his elbow. Amused mastery indeed!
Possibly the only teacher who ever got an unbidden “Sir” from all us little thugs, any of whom could have gubbed him in an instant, he was so gangly, creaky and wheezy.

AR: Using first differences of the variables is a mistaken way to look for linear relationships between potentially cointegrated variables. You can look it up.

I thought the canonical view which had developed was that women are the gatekeepers when it comes to sex, whereas men control access to relationships/commitment/marriage. Therefore it would stand to figure that it is men’s behavior which is driving the marriage data, not women’s.

When I actually try to figure out how to drive the data in my own small way, I find the only way I can raise the median or average age for men (now that I’m older than both) is to, ironically, get married! Not-marrying at all, which is the more radical position, only shows up in the declining marriage rate.

Martian BachelorAR: Using first differences of the variables is a mistaken way to look for linear relationships between potentially cointegrated variables. You can look it up.

I cannot tell if you are objecting to the Granger causality itself, or the application of it.
More explanation would be a good thing.

Failing that, it would be more useful if you could provide a pointer to a source.

I thought the canonical view which had developed was that women are the gatekeepers when it comes to sex, whereas men control access to relationships/commitment/marriage.

Yes. However, men are not free to just drag women off of the street and marry them, you know.
It is customary for men to marry women who are willing to do so, and also for the man to find the woman worth marrying. Can you see any way either of those conditions might affect the age of first marriage?

Therefore it would stand to figure that it is men’s behavior which is driving the marriage data, not women’s.

Why? Seriously, why do you believe that to be true?

When I actually try to figure out how to drive the data in my own small way, I find the only way I can raise the median or average age for men (now that I’m older than both) is to, ironically, get married! Not-marrying at all, which is the more radical position, only shows up in the declining marriage rate.

@AR
Interested(?) never said what data he input. If it was just the series of median first marriage ages, then that’s clearly flawed. There are a number of possibilities. You can basically treat remaining unmarried as ‘survivorship.’ You could inquire about differentiation of predictability for the marriage rate of female survivors of a certain age when using various data, such as their cohorts recent survival history, and that combined with some information from the male group. But there are a lot of choices for info from the male group to consider. There are plenty of other possibilities to be considered too; not much point in commenting on what Interested(?) wrote when we don’t know what was done. If there is a lack of symmetry in the added variables from the male cohort, then Granger can introduce some uncertainty due to the difference in marriage by sex.

Anon E. Myshkin, I’ll have to think about those points for a while, but you may have some valid objections to the Granger causality work mentioned.

Conceptually, men cannot marry women until the women are ready to marry. Since women are strongly urged by many groups in society, including the tradcons of the UMC (See “Darwins”) to establish a career first, then marry later, in the middle and upper middle classes it seems likely the women are driving the increase in “age at first marriage”, not the men. Men don’t seem too likely to GTOW until they are over 30, also, although that could be beginning to change.

This gtow when I hear it always makes me wince, of what use is this term?

I decided I would not marry at 23, I decided I would leave the corporate world at 25. Yet I am no gtow. Too many men think this loaded term mean a Jesuit life or cleaning cans from the comfort of a trailer park home. It is neither.

This is why mra is the only legitimate men’s movement, gamehucksters are obsessed with titles and identity, and manosphere bloggers indulge in too much mental masturbation. Donate to causes, and listen to the rules of Tom leykis. All else is fanciful blather! It could be taught in a single afternoon!

If we took the effort so many men in the manosphere and put it into advocacy we would be a political pressure group ffs! Instead 98% are content on sit on their wallets fiddling. Paul Elam was right! I’m winding down my involvement on these blogs, this place being the last game sphere blog I read. I’ll donate money to groups but no more time. You’re on your own now.

This is why one should marry a sheltered homeschooled teenager who’s never had a driver’s license or forgo the whole thing. The more exposed to the culture, the more likely she’s been irreparably corrupted.

Even being homeschooled is no guarantee. By my wife’s report, the high school aged girls in our coop are just as hypergamous and atttention-seeking as their public-school sisters. Case in point: my wifes team teaches the high school government class. They were discussing Locke, natural law, and the pitfalls of man governing man. Even girl in the class made the argument that others may be morally deficient, but not them (essentially NAWALT). The boys all quoted Romans 3:10.

Mr Minter – great post. Long time listener, first time caller. I am doing my own thing as well, except I skipped the step of getting married, having kids, and getting divorced. There is simply no incentive for the modern (american) man to get married. Well, except the urge to procreate and I might do that in my late 50’s. I am 38, financially independent, work for myself, and do what I want to do when I want to do it. There is a certain sense of freedom in that sentence. My pathetic beta married friends (I like to call them surrender monkeys) lifestyle contrasts ever so slightly with mine…

Them – “hey John, thanks for the offer to join you for the free tickets on the 50 yardline to watch the Bears. But my wife made plans with her friend and her husband for dinner so I can’t make it”
Me – American Airlines ran a deal on business class tickets to Helsinki. So I bought a ticket to check out some scandinavian culture and went. Because I could.

Them – “hey John, good idea getting drinks after work but I can’t because it’s my turn to pick up little Susie at daycare”
Me – on a Fri morning, my friend in NYC told me about a launch promo party he was throwing that night, which would include models. I immediately took a cab to o’hare to take the next flight out. Because I could.

Them – “wow, my [fill in the blank soul less company] offered me a 25% raise for a new position but it’s in another state. Gotta think of the kids so we are staying put”
Me – I put my focus on my career early, worked 80 hour weeks, moved to several different states, and because i wasnt tied down to a woman who shunned risk taking, was able to take large equity stakes in startups and ended up making enough to retire (basically work for myself managing my investments) at age 35.

I could go on and on and on…

My point is that there is SO much risk for me to marry (drastic lifestyle change, rigged court system, etc,), not to mention the difficult task of finding a beautiful, feminine woman who will make a great mother, that I’m not going to do it. Ever. Thanks feminist society, you’re the best!

I made enough money in Silicon Valley to call it quits. Like you, I busted my ass and put in my share of 80-hour weeks and finally made my stake on stock options.

Now I’m living in Russia and dating hot blondes fifteen years younger on my terms. I do some consulting work when I feel like I need to work, but most of my money comes from my investment portfolio income stream. In general, I do what the hell I want to do when I want to do it… and the amount of feminist-inspired crap I have to tolerate is pretty close to zero. I write my own rules in life now.

Looking for what I wrote this morning (but unable to find it) I have just come across your reply to me. Sometimes I think that the problem with reading and commenting on American blogs is that the States is so different, how can they possibly catch the references and subtleties of what we write, such as your description of life in the lower Fourth. I recognise it all too well – Larkin, Hughes and a sureptitious orange-coloured Penguin which falls open at page 221.

Writing on this 6-7 weeks after it began. But just came across it today.

The first however many dozen posts from the first above informed me as to how dyfunctional our society is. As a religious man who has been all my life (religious, but not dour), I learned about things that have helped me my entire life. For example, I learned that one of the main purposes of marriage is not legalized co-prostitution, but to “…be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth.” In other words, sex should not be divorced from procreation.

And, I was taught, both by precept and by example, that one should marry, and typically remain married to one’s first spouse their entire life. So was my wife, whom, likewise, came from a religious (yet not dour) family.

My parents married at age 22 (my dad) and 18 respectively in 1943. They had eight children over a period of about 22-1/2 years, of which I was the sixth child.

My wife’s father had been married before to a woman who bore two children. She left him for another man. And he remarried within a few years my wife’s mother. Her mother had her first baby at age 29. She carried and gave birth to 10 children in 13 years. My wife was the 9th of her 10 (11 of her dad’s 12).

When she and I married, she was 19 and I was 26 (we met on her birthday, when I was still 25). I had finished acquiring two bachelor degrees. We have co-produced nine children (out of 15 pregnancies) of which the six oldest are married, and have, currently, 8 children combined (two more are ‘on the way’).

I don’t know how many children, of course, my children will end up having. My parents (who are deceased) have 41 grandchildren. My parents-in-law, who are both still alive (he is 96, she is 92) have 63 grandchildren, of which one is deceased. They have 91 great-grandchildren with at least 10 more on their way. (BTW, my father-in-law, who was the third of nine children and the oldest boy in his parents family, has more posterity than ALL OF HIS 8 SIBLINGS COMBINED)!

This past summer, I called my father-in-law and talked to him about the ‘Dust Bowl’ days of the 1930’s. He worked then on his parents’ farm (they were sodbusting homesteaders originally from Denmark). They had tilled the same Northern plains farm since the early 1900’s. My father-in-law, Ed, told me of how when they harvested in the years 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1936, all of those years, they harvested much less than they PLANTED! (1935, he said, was the sole ‘bumper crop’ year – huge harvests that year). But that one year could not make up for the drought and dearth in yield of the other four years.

Regarding human reproduction, most of the WHOLE WORLD is in the same boat economically as much of the Western Great Plains were biologically during the ‘dust bowl’ droughts.

When those born between 1946 and 1964 are all retired, their children’s generation will be approaching 20% SMALLER numbers than their parents. How, economically, can that few children support that many seniors? (I answer rhetorical questions, even my own). Answer: They can’t!

So, what will happen? Complete and utter economic collapse (and likely long before we’re all retired). And that means an economic depression that will make the 1930’s look like a picnic!

Marry in your 30’s, many of you after having “sown your wild oats”? Don’t you know that, as is predicted, that those who “sow the wind” shall “reap the whirlwind (meaning, ‘tornado’)!

And, wars accompany economic depressions. Look at the the Panic of 1910 (a depression) – World War I. “The (what’s so) Great (about an economic) Depression”? World War II. And, our continuation and ‘blossoming’ of the ‘Great Recession’ into, probably, ‘The Greatest (Economic) Depression’ (EVER)? Can you say, (non)-Civil War II & World War III?

Forget compatibility. Forget bastardizing a child or two. Think— how, other than by insufficiently self-reproducing, can we annihilate ourselves? When money fails, and when you are starving, trust me, you’ll find a way to do it to each other!